Govt to make e-ticketing more stringent with verification of IRCTC IDs: Piyush Goyal

New Delhi: With the launching of its 'Operation Thunder', rail ministry is set to make e-ticketing more stringent.

The government has revised the booking limit in a month with a single IRCTC ID to 12- only if an individual Aadhar number is linked to this account. Further, it is to ensure that "at least one of the passengers in the passenger list is verifiable through Aadhaar," the rail minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply in the Upper House. The ministry is to scrutinise the bookings and will deactivate User ID on a daily basis if malpractices are found. "Around 1.26 lakh IDs have been deactivated from April 1, 2018, to May 31, 2019," the minister further claimed.

Recently, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) ceased 22,253 tickets of Rs. 32,99,093 during its first phase of 'Operation Thunder' and arrested 613 ticket-touts till the month of May, this year. During the period like festivals, summer vacations, and any other holidays fake booking are being done through fake IDs. This the illegal ticket booking process happens in Tatkal quotas especially.

Further, there is a restriction on authorized agents of IRCTC for booking tickets during the first fifteen minutes of opening of Advance Reservation Period booking and Tatkal booking, Goyal mentioned.

The regular checks are conducted in mass contact areas- PRS centres, booking offices, platforms, trains etc. to prevent unauthorised ticketing activities. In the last year, 2391 touts were arrested.